Playbook series: Activating your internal AI champions

Published via GitHub Executive Insights | Authored by Matt Nigh, Program Manager Director of AI for Everyone

In our recent piece, GitHub’s internal playbook for building an AI-powered workforce, we argued that AI adoption isn’t a tech problem, it’s a change management problem. We laid out an operating model built on eight pillars, from executive sponsorship to data-driven metrics. But one pillar consistently makes the biggest difference in turning plans into real, widespread use: a network of internal AI advocates.

Buying AI tools without empowering people to use them is a fast track to failure. Even with great tech and clear policies, employees will hesitate if they don’t see how AI fits into their day-to-day work. That’s where advocates come in. They’re the human bridge between strategy and execution.

This post focuses on how to build and scale an AI advocates program that drives bottom-up change.

The role of the grassroots champion

AI advocates are volunteer champions. They’re part coach, part translator, and part feedback loop. Their real influence comes from peer-to-peer trust, not executive mandates.

Advocates drive change by:

• Making AI real: They find and share practical examples from their teams that show how AI helps in everyday work.
• Helping others get started: They answer questions, mentor peers, and help others clear early hurdles.
• Keeping learning continuous: They act as an ongoing training engine, regularly surfacing the most useful tools, tips, and use cases to help their teams stay sharp and effective.
• Surfacing insights: They bring real-time feedback about what’s working, what’s confusing, and where more support is needed.

A blueprint for building your advocate network

You don’t need a big budget to launch this program, but you do need intention and support. The goal isn’t to control advocates — it’s to empower them.

Phase 1: Launch and recruitment (first 30 days)

Find your champions by asking for them. The most motivated advocates will raise their hands.

1. Write a clear call to action: Explain why the program matters and why being part of it is a unique opportunity.
2. Promote it widely: Post the announcement on high-visibility internal channels with a deadline to create energy around a founding group.
3. Onboard thoughtfully: Host a kickoff session. Set expectations (e.g., 30–60 minutes a week) and introduce the support available.

Phase 2: Enablement and community (first 90 Days)

Once you’ve recruited your advocates, help them connect and start contributing.

1. Create a community hub: Use a private Slack channel (or similar) so advocates can share wins, troubleshoot, and stay connected.
2. Set a regular cadence: Hold monthly check-ins to keep momentum and gather feedback.
3. Encourage quick wins: Ask advocates to start small, share a use case, answer a question, mentor a teammate.
4. Highlight early impact: Publicly celebrate advocate contributions. Recognition builds credibility and attracts more participants.

Phase 3: Operationalize and scale (day 90 and beyond)

As the program matures, it’s time to scale the impact and make the community self-sustaining.

1. Nominate community leaders: Identify standout advocates who are ready to take on a leadership role. These leaders can help run check-ins, mentor new advocates, and guide the community’s direction.
2. Distribute ownership: Gradually transition responsibility for the hub, updates, and cadence from the central team to community leaders. This shared ownership boosts engagement and long-term sustainability.
3. Build leadership structures: Create lightweight roles (e.g., regional leads, topic leads) to organize efforts and give leaders clear ways to contribute.
4. Support with tooling: Provide templates, facilitation guides, and spotlight opportunities to make it easy for leaders to run effective meetings and showcase progress.

By Phase 3, the advocate network should be less dependent on the core team and more of a self-running engine that is led by the community.

Navigating early questions from your advocates

Once you've assembled your founding cohort, they will have questions. This is a sign of healthy engagement. Anticipating and addressing these early concerns is key to maintaining momentum. We found two questions came up consistently:

• "What is the expected time commitment?" Volunteers are often passionate but also busy. It's crucial to frame the role as flexible and low-pressure. We positioned it as a "choose your own adventure," with a suggested minimum of 30-60 minutes per week. This assures advocates that the program is meant to fit within their work, not become a second job, empowering them to contribute in a way that feels valuable and sustainable.
• "What should we be doing right now?" New advocates are eager to contribute but may need direction. Rather than providing a rigid checklist, we found it more effective to empower them. We explained that their primary role was to be the program's eyes and ears, and that we couldn't build tailored support without their partnership. We encouraged them to start by simply observing and sharing what was already happening in their teams. This includes the successes, the questions, the roadblocks, and to connect with the program lead for 1:1 consulting to brainstorm org-specific strategies.

By framing the program as a partnership, you transform advocates from passive participants into active co-creators of your company's AI journey.

Measuring the impact of your advocate network

To justify continued investment and steer the program effectively, it's crucial to measure its impact. While the ROI of a grassroots community can seem intangible, you can track its influence through a combination of qualitative and quantitative measures.

• Build a narrative with qualitative data: The most powerful evidence of success comes from the stories of impact. Systematically collect and showcase advocate-driven success stories. Did an advocate help a team automate a tedious process? Did they unblock a colleague who was struggling with a new AI tool? These narratives provide concrete proof of value that resonates with leadership and inspires other employees.
• Track engagement with quantitative data: Complement the stories with leading indicators of the program's health and reach.
  • Community growth: Monitor the membership and activity levels in the advocate community's dedicated communication channels.
  • Advocate-led activities: Track the number and attendees of workshops, office hours, or learning sessions hosted by advocates.
  • Program mentions: Include questions about the advocate program in broader employee engagement or productivity surveys to gauge its visibility and perceived helpfulness.

As the program matures, you can begin to correlate these activities with broader business KPIs, such as improvements in developer satisfaction, reduced cycle times, or increased product innovation, demonstrating a clear link between this human infrastructure and business outcomes.

Your real ROI is your people

The difference between a company that just has AI tools and one that is truly powered by AI isn't the number of licenses you buy. It's what happens after the purchase. It's about solving the "how do I actually use this for my job?" problem that every employee faces.

This is where your AI advocates program delivers its real value. It's not just a "nice to have" community; it's a strategic investment that pays off in concrete ways:

• You get faster, more authentic adoption. When an engineer sees a teammate, an advocate they trust, share a specific prompt that saved them an hour of debugging, that's more powerful than any top-down mandate. Advocates create this critical social proof.
• You discover what actually works. Your central program team can't possibly know the unique workflows of every team. Your advocates are on the front lines, discovering novel, practical use cases that solve real problems. They build the internal library of what good looks like.
• You become faster at adapting. The next big AI feature or tool is always just around the corner. With an established advocate network, you have a built-in team of early adopters ready to learn, test, and then teach the rest of the organization. Your company's ability to absorb change accelerates dramatically.

Ultimately, empowering your most passionate employees to teach their peers is how you scale AI fluency. You're not just building a program; you're building a resilient, self-sustaining learning engine that drives the value of your technology investment far beyond the initial purchase order.

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